Hey everyone, welcome to this weekend's contest! This is our 26th Brogue contest.

The seed for this contest, created from stock market indices and a bit of hocus-pocus, is 971305.

How to compete:

1. The contest begins right now, on Friday August 24th, 2012 at 22:00 UTC (6:00 PM EDT). You can start your game any time after this. The contest is open to anyone.

2. Start a game by control-clicking "New Game" in Brogue v1.6.4 and entering the seed. Verify that the screenshot below matches what you see on your screen.

3. Play through the game. You only get one chance. We are all on the honor system here.

4. Once you are finished, record your score and post the details of your game in this thread. Minimum requirements for consideration include your score, cause of death and lowest level reached. However, the thread is open to all spoilers, so feel free to add screenshots, game recordings, character dumps, strategy tips, etc. You do not need to wait for the end of the contest.

5. The contest will run for 60 hours and ends on Monday August 27th, 2012 at 10:00 UTC (6:00 AM EDT). You must finish your game and post your results by that time to be considered in the contest.

6. As a result of point 4,

PLEASE DO NOT READ THE REST OF THE POSTS IN THIS THREAD UNTIL YOUR RUN IS FINISHED.

As always, honor system.

7. Good luck! Have fun, etc.

Last edited by boa13 on August 27th, 2012, 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

22 players competed in this week-end contest. The winner is Cybermg who ascended with 8 lumenstones, stealing the victory from Lilli at the last moment. Congratulations to both of you!

This seed was very generous, giving many useful staffs, rings, and end-game armor in the first few levels. This may be the reason why ten players managed to reach depth 17 and below. However, the mid-game was significantly less generous, even difficult, and only three players survived below depth 21 and managed to reach the amulet.

Died on depth 5 due to an arrow turret. I'd be interested in seeing how many other people die this way (or from the fall) when they realise that the item room isn't safe sanctuary from the gas outside.

The early game looked very promising with heaps of nice gear. I made a few careless mistakes and recovered, though as usual I could not keep my allies alive for any length of time. At one point there was a vault with a ring of awareness which I meant to take - but grabbed a key instead and opened another vault with it, so could not get the ring. This probably cost me the game.

I really started to struggle around level 21, having no reliable way to deal with tentacle horrors or dragons. This is where my consumables began to dwindle and by level 24 there was not much left. I used magic mapping to plot the quickest route through levels 25 and 26, detect magic showed me the amulet location, and telepathy allowed me to avoid the deadliest enemies. After grabbing the amulet I quaffed darkness and speed, but a dragon spotted me anyway and gave pursuit. Using discord on a revenant I managed to kill the dragon, but then another one arrived, and my health was running low. I tossed a potion of confusion at the horde of monsters following and it actually looked like I might get away.

Health was low but I had some distance from the pursuers who were on a lower level. I headed for the next staircase... and stepped on a fire trap. By this time all my potions of healing and fire immunity were gone, and there was no water nearby, so there was nothing I could do about it.

I finished with +8 plate, +6 war axe, +3 and +1 rings of clairvoyance, +6 staff of lightning, +3 staff of entrancement, +3 staff of discord, and +2 staff of firebolt.

andrewdoull wrote:Died on depth 5 due to an arrow turret. I'd be interested in seeing how many other people die this way (or from the fall) when they realise that the item room isn't safe sanctuary from the gas outside.

That's where my second attempt ended. I knew I'd be trapped in the item room so I pushed my monkey through the trap door with entrancement and then blinked through into the hole myself. It was still a rash move, though, not to explore the level below first, with all of its jellies and turrets.

andrewdoull wrote:Died on depth 5 due to an arrow turret. I'd be interested in seeing how many other people die this way (or from the fall) when they realise that the item room isn't safe sanctuary from the gas outside.

That's where my second attempt ended. I knew I'd be trapped in the item room so I pushed my monkey through the trap door with entrancement and then blinked through into the hole myself. It was still a rash move, though, not to explore the level below first, with all of its jellies and turrets.

I didn't even notice or think of using the trap door. First I tried to save my monkey by pushing him out of the room with entrancement. But then I accidentally pushed him into the lava. To deal with the poison gas I just set it on fire which gave me enough time to run through, find the lever, raise the portcullis, and make my escape. Might have had to waste a healing potion though.

Equipment of note:+1 mace+3 plate mailstaff of lightning [5/5] (2 enchantments)staff of protection [7/7] (5 enchantments)staff of discord [3/3], staff of entrancement [3/3], staff of lightning [3/3], staff of firebolt [2/2]monkey from level 1 (strength sapping, flight from a will o the wisp, fire immunity, died a couple of turns before I did)goblin from level 4 (transference, fire immunity, discorded after entering depth 17 and killed by the monkey)

I was in the north west of level 17 hiding from 2 firebolt turrets and waiting for my monkey to return from his wanderings so that he could take care of them - flight has gone down massively in my estimation in the last couple of weeks. He returned and was in the middle of taking care of the first turret when a hunting lich appeared on the far side of the lake of lava. By the time I remembered my staff of entrancement there were too many phantoms and furies around to make use of it. We were overwhelmed.

I didn't find too many scrolls of enchantment in this run. Only 7 in the first 16 levels though there was an enchantment scroll vault on depth 17 that I didn't get to. Edit: I see now that there was also an enchantment scroll vault on depth 4.

I forgot to take a ring from the ring vault on depth 4.

Level 4 poison gas key trap. It's only after reading this thread that I remembered those rooms now have levers to raise the portcullis. I used the staff of entrancement to create some distance between myself and my two allies. Then I increased that distance by throwing a potion of paralysis at them. Earlier I had use-id'd a potion of telepathy on depth 2 and made my way up to depth 5 to check that there wasn't anything especially dangerous on that level so I knew that jumping down wouldn't be too dangerous.

Edit: I've just realised this is my best attempt at the monkey challenge.

Last edited by thedrin on August 25th, 2012, 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

This really counts as "killed by a typo", when I quaffed my last remaining potion of healing several levels earlier rather than identifying a wand. There was nothing dangerous around when I burned to death; I just had no way to stop it. (I was burned first by a fire trap, then by a flame turret while running to a non-burning square; either alone wouldn't have been a problem.)

I was going for a \oLightning build, but was in trouble anyway, due to somehow managing to fail to access both the enchantment scroll vaults, leaving me a little underenchanted. The first one, I solved the puzzle with the trapdoor, and then couldn't get back into the room from outside (nor shut the gas off; setting it on fire didn't help, IMO the gas should go away by itself after a while). The second one, I used a scroll of shattering early on in the level, and I think it somehow destroyed the trigger mechanism for the underworm vault; at least, I couldn't find any way to start the vault off, even though I'm reasonably sure I could have cleared it. So my staff was just \10 when I died; with no wisdom around, it needed to be higher.

Perhaps I should have taken awareness rather than clairvoyance. I tend to prefer clairvoyance, because the passive effects build up, and traps aren't usually a problem, but they were this time.

Creaphis wrote:155, quit on level 1, after throwing a staff when I meant to apply it. That never bodes well.

EDIT: I replayed this seed a little bit for fun. It's disturbingly generous. Have fun dudes.

It's very generous early, but it's unusually mean in the midgame.

Btw, this was my first run when I seriously used a staff of entrancement (although I didn't enchant it). It was surprisingly useful, with all the lava in this seed, giving me several instakills. It's also neat for dealing with things like centaur packs (entrance the nearest one, get it to shoot at the next-nearest one while you run away), and zombies (set them on fire, then use entrancement to pin them in place).

duh - second week in a row I will finish dead last....burnt to death on level 2, going for the key from the room in the top right-- running for the water while alight, only to have the scalding steam, so stepped back out of the water and kept burning .. duh - doesn't water usually put out fire? Had played potion roulette to get the first key, so the confused monkey had fallen off the ledge to the level below -- didn't get down to level 3 to check for squished monkey guts.

This was a bit of a strange game because for most of it I was unsure of what to do. The beginning was a cinch thanks to the plate mail, which I was wearing at +7 fairly early thanks to numerous potions of strength and scrolls of enchantment. Weapons were a problem. I wielded a cursed spear for a while until finding the +1 mace. I eventually replaced that with a +0 war axe, which in retrospect probably wasn't the best idea. I ran into several difficult spots on D18 and ran out of potions of healing because of it. On D19, I walked into a room with an ogre shaman, thinking I was pretty safe attacking in an open area. Well, several wraiths appeared and I was soon surrounded by them along with hasted ogres, my health low. I almost escaped thanks to the staff of blinking; I got through a door into a hallway and decided to make a stand. But the lead wraith must have been upset about my killing a couple of his buddies and killed me in one hit.

Haha, yeah I died to that phantom on depth 17 too. I was like, what's hitting me? Unseen arrow/acid turret? So I danced around a door to see if I could catch a phantom just in case, but nothing was showing up. So I waited a bit and the phantom oneshots me. I'm not really sure where he was! I'd cleared all the flame turrets, too : (12728 points+8 Platemail+1 Mace+6 Lightning staff

Also on Depth 17 there's some sort of pathing glitch because all the monsters kept walking towards this spot next to lava. I must have gotten 5 kills just by entrancing monsters to walk-the-plank.http://www.mediafire.com/?rp7i7b7rcnnrpvx

BS, stupid mistake. I had several potions of healing but thought I had plenty of health to finish off the LAST Underworm left from the tunnel, which only had a sliver of life left. It got lucky and hit me once and knocked off a huge chunk, all my remaining health. I had otherwise cleared this level, and I was just about to grab the 2 enchant scrolls from the vault, which is really disappointing since they would have made a huge difference... big drought in the middle levels w/ no enchants at all, and it was starting to cause problems.

Lots of potential for offensive potion use, it's how I stayed alive mostly.

Flirted with starvation early trying to unlock some of the vaults. Barely made it out of that one with the gas outside; had to take the blinking staff, light the gas on fire, run out to the room and blink out. Close call.

Lots of pink jellies early on.

Early entrance staff was fun, had to use it far more often than I ever have before.

Hope no one tries to use that warhammer on D:14 before identifying it :-O.

I'd saved a wand for ages thinking it was Negation, and used it on the sleeping Dragon. The wand of beckoning put her next to me, so I decided to try taking it out. A nice chunk of damage off for hitting the still sleeping dragon, but the rest of my shots missed and I was quickly toast.

+9 Plate, +2 War Axe, +3 Awareness, +2 Stealth, 5 & 3 Lightning, 3 Fireball, 3 Discord (which I should have used more) and 3 Entrancement which I used more than ever before

I'm sad. I'm tied with Box at 155 points; died to a jelly on level 3 - entirely preventable with all those staves. I was hallucinating, but it's no excuse.

EDIT: I'm going to try the seed again, but this time I'm going to leave all of the staves and equipment from the first 3 levels behind - call it penance for screwing up so badly. I want to see how well I can compete if I play a little smarter this time around. Second round of jellies, here I come!

EDIT2: Well, that didn't last long. 155 points again, died to a goblin on level 5. It seems I'm playing more recklessly than I realized. Probably a symptom of having gone a long time without playing. Oh well, I'll get better.

OtspIII 155 Killed by a Pink Jelly on level 5. (Jumped from vault trap on 4)Glimpse 291 killed by a goblin on level 5 (goblin rave party)Big Sean Quit on level 17 with 10112 (lost lightning staff?)Lilli 53169 Escaped the Dungeons of Doom!DalaranJ Killed by a vampire bat on depth 6 (self-paralyzed by potion). 777BetterLekNextTime 155 DL 2 (caustic gas from bloat)Alkanos As for my own game, I burned to death on Level 6 with 633 points.deptstoremook 8777 Killed by a phantom on level 16. [while self-paralyzed ugh]

My second try: 14468 killed by a phantom on depth 19.

Ran out of healing on depth 17 because the game decided fire turrets were suddenly in vogue. Also worms in the walls on the same level, tough stuff. Then on 19 I got sandwiched by a Lich and a salamander. I should have drank my telepathy but I forgot about the Lich's little trick.

BTW, pretty happy with my choice of clairvoyance in the early vault. Really helped me spot all the gold caches.

boa13 wrote:Would it be possible to have more details about what is likely to be the winning entry? Could Lilli come tell his/her exploits, and maybe share the broguerec?

I'll ask.

I know he's going to post a winning run in the Something Awful short roguelike Let's Play thread, but it's not this particular acension. I think it might be the one where he made it down to 29 and back out so I'm looking forward to seeing it.

boa13 wrote:Would it be possible to have more details about what is likely to be the winning entry? Could Lilli come tell his/her exploits, and maybe share the broguerec?

Sure, why not (although I doubt I'll be the only winning entry, there are a lot of other players that are much better than I am). As people have already said, the seed was incredibly generous in the early game. +3 platemail and five staves on the first two floors made the early game hilariously easy. I ended up going for a staff of lightning build since its something I actually know how to do. At the poison trap I picked up the door key instead of the staff of blinking because I'm a sucker who always has to check the other doors. I'm not sure if it lead to the two scrolls of enchantment on the floor or the room with three rings, either way I was fairly happy with the end result (although I never found another staff of blinking, which made me very sad). The three rings were clairvoyance, light, and awareness. Normally I'd run with light, because the lower dungeon levels can be a bit of a pain when it gets very dark and theres nothing to see by. However, since I found it so early on in the dungeon I grabbed the ring of awareness instead. It helped me deal with all the traps littered around the dungeon, and it found me a handful of secret doors I probably would have missed otherwise, so that was nice.

After the early dungeon the game started to get rough. Up until around the late teens the game was fairly stingy with scrolls of enchantment, and I never found a ring of wisdom. I was dropping every scroll of enchantment I had into my staff of lightning and I think it had only barely reached 10 by the time I was around dungeon 17 or 18. The floors right around the late teens were fairly nasty. 17 had plenty of flame turrets and the underworm key holder, along with plenty of other fun encounters. I think 18 was the first floor I met a tentacled horror on (which killed my only ally at the time), and it was either 19 or 21 that the first dragon showed up right by the stairway down. Due to the lack of a ring of wisdom my play was a lot slower in general, I was conserving my staff of lightning charges when I could, and I rested way more than normal. The past few times Ive reached the amulet I've had something like 4 rations by the time I get down there, this time I was oscillating between 1 and 2 the entire run.

On I think floor 24 or 25 I found an ally vault with a few imps and dar priestesses/battlemages. I had held onto a wand of beckoning since early on in the dungeon hoping I'd come across one of these, I ended up expending all the charges and they essentially carried me the rest of the way down. Although the battlemage had me constantly nervous around swamp gas. I took a quick peak down into 27 since I figured other players would grab some lumenstones, but I wasn't aware that lumenstones don't count as magical items, so the potion of detect magic I had been holding onto for a while was wasted. I tried exploring a little bit, but was forced to quickly retreat when I was overwhelmed by a few dragons. After that I just beat a hasty retreat with the amulet in hand. Overall I don't think there was anything special about what I did. The biggest thing was just conserving my staff of lightning charges and making really good use of the discord staves I found.

Here is the recording file if someone wants to watch it. http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?i2an219j4yqqddq

Thanks for the write-up, it's always interesting to see the choices made by other players, the luck they feel they had, the difficulties they encountered and surmounted. You say there's nothing special about what you did... That's a true hero speech. I say you escaped the Dungeons of Doom, and with three hours remaining in the contest, you are the only one who did that. That is special.

As everybody has noted, the beginning of the game was very generous. +3 plate armor and staff of entrancement [3/3] on depth 1; two staffs of lightning [3/3], a staff of discord [3/3] and a staff of firebolt [2/2] on depth 2; non-cursed armors to use before strengthening enough for the plate, and an uncursed war axe on depth 3; a choice of +3 ring of awareness and +3 ring of clairvoyance on depth 4, along with scrolls of enchanting, staff of blinking [3/3], and staff of protection [3/3]; +2 banded mail of mutuality on depth 5 (and the first cursed item in the game).

Afterwards, the levels were more bare, with a few typical consumables, and not that much food, strength and enchanting. It is only at depth 9 that some interesting items could be found again (+3 war hammer notably), and the first strong allies (excluding the monkey on depth 1 and goblin on depth 4): a choice of goblin mystic or ogre, notably. Afterwards, and until I died on depth 14, there was only a +1 mace on depth 10, and a library vault on depth 13.

I tend to favor staffs when I play, so it is no surprise I collected many of them, and chose to focus my enchantments on a staff of lightning. I couldn't manage to keep my allies alive very long, the monkey dying to the fire trap on depth 2, the goblin on depth 4 while I was paralyzed, the goblin mystic on depth 10 not recovering from a scroll of cause fear. There were several intense moments while I explored, notably the traps on depth 4 which I feel I handled well (exploring the vault while gas was filling the room, then burning the gas and jumping into the hole), quite a few enemies that I led into lava, a troll that I threw in chasms two times before I could finally kill him, and huge troops of goblins that I could handle from afar thanks to staffs.

On depth 14, I encountered a naga, and while I was retreating towards lava, a group of furies (surprising at that depth) surrounded us. Intense fight, which I survived thanks to a potion of confusion. Keeping exploring, I encountered a couple of dar blademasters and a remaining fury, at low health from the recent fight. I managed to kill the ogre and one dar, and at very low health, gambled on defeating the remaining dar rather than using a precious potion of health... Guess what happened?

Yeah, +3 platemail is just about the nicest armor you can find, and the staves were all nice. Went for the ring of Clairvoyance in the ring vault, and the staff of blinking instead of the door key in that nested vault. These items were invaluable for survival, and I can't speak how many times they saved my life. I'm especially a fan of clairvoyance from early on, because you save a lot of food with the more efficient exploration, and it helps you find hidden vaults/passages and avoid ambushes. It becomes super useful later on to help you locate lumenstones and avoid/manage encounters with dragons. I enchanted clairvoyance to +5.

Early enchants went into the platemail. I used the +1 mace for a while and eventually switched to the war axe. I was hoping for something a little better, but it turned out to be just barely sufficient, and useful against the hordes of liches. At this point, I'll always consider saving an inventory slot for a war axe / war pike for their situational usefulness. My armor was excellent (enchanted to +10), so I was able melee golems with relative ease.

I managed my inventory in the most tedious way possible, throwing items down pits and caravanning items across levels without pits. I was careful about food consumption, but the ring of clairvoyance really helped a lot. It's interesting that clairvoyance (or any food saving technique) => more food => more tedious inventory hauling => more consumables. Inventory hauling also improves item identification, because you can gather more items on a level and detect magic on more at once.

On to the endgame. I found a wand of negation (it's interesting that Lilli found beckoning, this must be the RNG issue that people were talking about before). Negation is one of the better staves for taking down dragons. I soon realized that the wand would best be put to use if I had lightning to follow up and finish off dragons. Very late in the game, I put all of my last enchant scrolls into lightning to bring it from 6/6 to 11/11 (unfortunately not 12/12, the even numbers have a bigger increase in power). I realized that I had to try my hardest to kill dragons without using negation charges, since I only had a limited amount. It turned out I had a lot of strategic options with discord and entrancement, and a lot of firepower in the few reserve recharging scrolls I had, so I eliminated quite a few dragons without using negation. Unfortunately, I wasn't so careful about conserving healing potions, and I didn't have as many is I would've liked for the final part of my journey. D:26 and 27 had a lot of dragons, so I thought I was only going to end up with 3 stones, but I decided to look further. Fortunately, D:28 and 29 both had lumenstones very tightly packed, and both spawned VERY few dragons (two on each), so I was able to gather 5 more stones from these levels. The three potions of telepathy were absolutely key for planning out 27/28/29, and the ring of clairvoyance also helped a lot. On D:29, with almost no consumables to spare, I read a teleportation scroll out of desperation, because I faced way more golems than I could hope to kill between me and the exit. I'm lucky my resting afterward wasn't interrupted, because I hardly had time to rest as I dodged dragons and used every last consumable from there to the surface.